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Today I have taken it upon myself to email the new head of the Church of England, Archbishop Oilwellby, ahem, Welby, with a few recommendations. I sincerely hope he raises these with our national leader, Call Me Dave. I share my email below, in case you too can be inspired to send your own ideas for the Archbishop’s coming reign:

Dear Archbishop Welby,

I am writing to express my delight at the announcement today that same sex marriage will be illegal across the Church of England (and the Church of Wales). Really, it is twice the delight, since it comes just a few short weeks after the Synod’s decision to ensure that no woman can be ordained in your House of God. These are two great milestones for Christianity, since God loves everyone apart from gays and ambitious women.[1] Although critics claim that enforcing a glass ceiling for women in the church and discriminating against non-heterosexuals is against UK law, we all know that it is best to ignore such trivialities and proceed with institutionalised bigotry because the bible says so. I am glad then, that everyone in the UK must abide by UK law, apart from the Church of England.

However, if we are to maintain customs that were popular in 500AD in spite of centuries of progress towards greater equality for women and non-heteros because the bible says so, then surely this legal concession for the Church does not go far enough. As Andrew Selous, parliamentary private secretary to the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, points out, “this legislation will mark a significant moment as this country will be passing a law that is directly contrary to what Jesus said about marriage in Mark chapter 10 and Matthew chapter 19.” These are sad times indeed for the country. I would therefore urge you, in your position as Archbishop, to persuade David Cameron and his parliamentary chums to bring back a few other biblical laws, so that we can fully do what the bible says and not limit our maintenance of centuries-old traditions to those that apply to gays and women (because that really would be discriminatory!). Here are my favourite three ideas to get you started:

1) Bring back the stoning of children (see Psalm 137), and then we can properly punish our offspring when they misbehave

2) Bring back slaves (see 1 Peter 2:18), so they can help us all to lead good lives with less work and economic resources. Actually, slavery is already widespread across the UK, so we will merely have to legislate so that slave-drivers can no longer be punished.

3) Bring back genocide against Israel’s neighbours (see 1 Samuel 15:3). Ah, again, it appears we already support this one. Apologies – no action by the coalition needed.

In anticipation of your response,

Natural, silent, woman, for whom my husband is my master.

[1] and a few other choice exceptions such as non-believers and worshippers of other Gods (such as Muslims), who will burn in hell

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